Letter: The art of language

Wednesday

“Respond to our better angels.” Is crudity our best means of expression? Even among our leading persons? Is our thinking so fuzzy we cannot find words that can accurately express those thoughts?

Do our addicting electronic devices meant for communicating now isolate each of us in our own little bubble of life? Are we no longer capable of relating to each other? Of being aware of the secret agony that is another person’s life? Of sharing in another’s moment of joy? I am haunted by the possibility that these are symptoms of our decline to where as Benjamin Franklin observed our Constitution can protect us from despotism, “until we become so corrupt we can live in no other form of government except despotism.”

Our English language is capable of so many shades of expression, shaped from a wide spectrum of languages across our world. Winston S. Churchill is an exemplar of that, with his emphasis on the old words, the shortest of them.

We are capable of living together for the enrichment of us all. That is “responding to our better angels.”

Robert G. Farr, Ames

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